Employee Monitor and Web Filter Topics

Pearl Software has released Version 12 R3 of its enterprise-class Internet monitoring and web filtering product line. This latest release extends Pearl Software’s Echo cybersecurity technology to Skype for Business. Focusing on enterprise customers, Echo’s data leak prevention (DLP) for Skype can accommodate Microsoft Lync installations as well as Skype used as part of the Microsoft Office 365 offering. Echo provides administrators with full insight into encrypted Skype Chat and IM communications without jeopardizing the integrity of the communication’s security or the quality of voice and video services. More about this topic...

At the outset, the #Obamacare website was not only riddled with errors, but it also came with a huge price tag: $600 million. Most of us in IT cringe due to the fact that we have had our own hopefully-less-public IT disasters. Projects evolve. New software, hardware, devices and network designs are introduced to users that have typically been tested, revised, regression tested until ready for release. The more complex, the further new releases will be from perfection.

When #Healthcare.gov went live the cacophony from the public combined with the bright lights of the media would make any IT development team want to curl up in the fetal position – and with good reason. With $600 million, one can only scratch their head and ask why the development wasn’t outsourced to a US company with a track record of competence. Why not IBM, HP or NYXT, the chief architects behind the single fault tolerant systems designed for the NYSE? Why not hire the beleaguered NASA; they’re pretty incredible at getting the impossible done. Why not tap the expertise of Google and Facebook; they live and breathe immense-scale data handling and user access. The Obama administration didn’t just throw up a faulty website, they emboldened so many that believe the government is incapable of doing big things. And in doing so, they allowed their detractors to easily conflate a faulty website with a public healthcare policy. More about this topic...

Commonly known as cyber-attacks, data breaches, or cybercrimes, data theft (whether it is internally or externally driven) can bankrupt the average business. During the fallout of a data breach, businesses can lose proprietary data that form the core of their capital-generating strategies. The aftermath of this can result in massive lawsuits. As these incidents increase, businesses are asking how much a cyber incident could cost them.

The U.S. government collects information on cybercrime and cyber espionage through various means. Yet, it is still difficult to accurately assess the cost of cybercrime for the average business because of varying business landscapes and the diversity of cybercrime attack methods. In addition, businesses are often reluctant to report these incidents due to the potentially devastating fallout or further exposing vulnerabilities that subsequent cybercrime provocateurs could exploit.

Many reputable cybercrime surveys peg the average business’s annual losses at anywhere from $1 million to more than $3 million. This falls in line with PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) 2014 Global Economic Crime Survey, which found that 7 percent of U.S. organizations lost $1 million or more due to cybercrime incidents in 2013. The survey went on to show that 19 percent of U.S. entities reported financial losses of $50,000 to $1 million, compared with 8 percent of worldwide respondents. More about this topic...